It’s hard to decide which aspect of the horrid April employment report the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Friday is the most troubling: the understated unemployment rate, the awful raw number of jobs added, their suspect seasonal conversion, or the sickening attempt at positive spin by the Obama administration’s labor secretary.

As to the genuineness of the official seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, the jig is basically up. It’s clear that many Americans, even among the relatively disengaged, have long since figured out that the official figure, which dipped to 8.1% in April, doesn’t include an extraordinary and unprecedented number of those who have given up looking for work. At 63.6%, the labor force participation rate is back to where it was in the early 1980s. Qualitatively, and despite a few years during which baby boomers have begun to collect Social Security, today’s rate is worse, because the frequency of stay-at-home parenting was far higher three decades ago. ZeroHedge has calculated that a participation rate equal to its post-1980 average would have generated an unemployment rate of 11.4%. Even establishment media reports from the likes of the Associated Press (aka the Administration’s Press) acknowledged that April’s rate drop occurred “only because more Americans gave up looking for work.”

It’s hard to understate how deeply disappointing April raw numbers of jobs added were, and how lucky the administration was (at least I hope it’s luck) that the seasonal conversions to 115,000 and 130,000 jobs added overall and in the private sector, respectively, came in as high as they did.

[T]he acid test for Team Obama’s claim that the economy is finally legitimately recovering will come during the next five months (February through June).

They’re flunking:

Despite a clearly larger pool of people who want to work or could be looking for work, through three of the first five months of the acid test period, this year’s economy has added fewer raw jobs than the 2004-2006 average for those same months. It has also added fewer than last year. The trend this year is even worse: February was okay, March trailed where it needed to be, and April stunk to high heaven. Sadly, it all makes sense. Last year’s peak in gas prices came in early May, about a month later than what (we hope) was this year’s early-April high point. In 2011, job creation in May and June fell off badly compared to what was needed. May and June 2012 seem to be on track for a repeat, or worse, as gas prices will almost certainly be higher than what motorists paid last year.

Most Americans don’t appreciate how truly bad the situation is because April’s seasonal adjustments worked in the administration’s favor. Somehow, even though the economy really added 283,000 and 233,000 fewer jobs in April 2012 than it did in April 2011, and 2010, respectively, April’s seasonally adjusted result was only 136,000 lower than 2011 and 124,000 lower than 2010. I’m not saying that the calculations were cooked (seasonal adjustments in March made things look a bit worse than they really were that month), but it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to expect that the 896,000 jobs actually added in April would have generated a zero or even negative result after seasonal conversion. I’ve been saying for years that relying solely on seasonally adjusted numbers during a time of abnormal economic volatility is foolish, and that the press’s almost universal failure to even look at the raw numbers in such times is derelict.

Unfortunately, those who believe that the BLS is no longer walled off from political influence gained three forms of support for their argument this month.

First, the bureau’s “Birth/Death” adjustment, which incorporated 206,000 jobs into April’s raw number, seems abnormally high and without strong basis. The adjustment in April 2011 was 172,000. We’re really supposed to believe that thousands more Americans are starting up enterprises than were doing so a year ago, and that they generated 20% more jobs than such people did a year ago (net of bankruptcies and other business terminations)? Subtracting Birth/Death from April in both years means that the raw number of job additions the bureau found through its normal survey methods dropped by over 30%.

Second, the employment report’s verbiage read like an attempt to water down the bad news in a vain attempt to minimize the damage. Unlike the vast majority of previous months when the news was better, the authors failed to mention the particularly weak number of seasonally adjusted 130,000 private-sector jobs added (130,000). It made sure to remind us that there were “gains averaging 252,000 per month for December to February” (like we care now?). It also decided to trumpet the seasonally adjusted 62,000 jobs added in “professional and business services,” even though the raw gains in that broad category were less than in each of the previous two Aprils, and despite the fact that this April’s number included 21,000 positions added at temporary help services. (Temps, a segment which is barely 2% of the private workforce, have made up over 740,000, or almost 28%, of the 2.66 million jobs added to private-sector payrolls since the recession officially ended in June 2009.)

Finally, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’s related press release was an arrogant exercise in see-no-evil partisanship, as seen in these excerpts (my comments are in italics):

I would characterize our growth as durable and steady. For 26 straight months, we have added private sector jobs. The national unemployment rate has fallen a full point in the last eight months. Layoffs are continuing to come down and are now back to 2006 levels. (Mass layoffs may be down, but unemployment claims, the better indicator of overall layoffs, were lower during every week in 2006 than during any week so far this year.)

In April, our largest gains — 62,000 new jobs — were in good-paying business and professional services careers, meaning more architects, engineers, computer programmers and consultants are finding jobs. (Uh, over one-third of them were temps, and most temps aren’t particularly well-paid.)

…

We’re on the right path, and we know our recovery would be even stronger if Congress hadn’t blocked almost every single proposed investment in the American Jobs Act. (Because AJA will work just as well as the stimulus did — oh, wait a minute …)

…

Going forward, we have a choice to make. We can either make investments in things like education, transportation and new sources of energy … Or we give more tax breaks to wealthy Americans who don’t need them and didn’t ask for them. (Team Obama’s current solution is hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases scheduled to kick in on January 1, 2013.)

This is delusional. All the lipstick in the world can’t disguise how ugly this pig is — and in case you’re wondering, I really am referring to the jobs report.

The only reasonable response to April’s employment report and the Labor Secretary’s reaction is “OMG.” As in, “Obama Must Go.”

Along with having a decades-long career in accounting, finance, training and development, Tom Blumer has written for several national online publications primarily on business, economics, politics and media bias. He has had his own blog, BizzyBlog.com, since 2005, and has been a PJM contributor since 2008.

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1.
MidniteRambler

Who cares about the economy? Our Dear Leader jumped out of a helicopter and killed Osama bin Laden!

War on Women! Fluke!

Justice For Trayvon!

Slow Jamming the News!

ANYWAY, IT’S ALL BUSH’s FAULT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

…

Prepare yourself for six more months of the above, and whatever else team 0bama comes up with to distract voters from his disastrous economic record.

I really am getting sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to make the monthly jobs report look good. All they keep saying is, “At least we’re headed in the right direction and adding jobs.” True, they may be adding jobs, but it’s not nearly enough to keep up with population growth, let alone all of the kids graduating from college. I guess if we added 10 jobs in May that would still be “headed in the right direction,” but it’s not going to help the economy that much, let alone the people in it.

If you want to see where the economy is headed through a different analysis outside of labor, take a look at Louis Woodhill’s Forbes article about the lag in Real Business Nonresidential Fixed Investment over the last 3 quarters. The article shows that the number has cratered over the last 9 months and is now in negative territory.

The labor picture can’t improve until the investment in plant and equipment improves, Woodhill points out.

The article was published last week. It throws some serious ice water at the Keynsian theory of recovery that Reich, Krugman, and Obama love so much.

How can these people be so smart if they continue to believe in economic bromides that are clearly discredited and wrong? It’s like a phoney religion to these fools; but they keep drinking the KoolAid despite the evidence there is cyanide in it.

“Temps, a segment which is barely 2% of the private workforce, have made up over 740,000, or almost 28%, of the 2.66 million jobs added to private-sector payrolls since the recession officially ended in June 2009.”

To me, this is a Big. Red. Flag. Such a large percentage of temp hiring shows how wary businesses remain and how tenuous the “recovery” is.

Always rather amusing to see the very corpulent faces of the leaders of America’s so called workers unions smiling up at their god and leader Obama. The workers have been sold out and thrown under the bus by these pernicious labor leaders; building buicks in China now; hooray for American unions; driving manufacturing out of the country hooray for big labor; however they can always look out over the beaming faces of the teachers slaving away in the indoctrination camps of public education. When teachers and government workers start filling in the line at soup kitchens then we might hear a complaint but it will probably be the sos; Bush did it.

How the heck can you write an article about JOBS, and not mention the elephant in the living room. Or in the bedroom, depending on where you want to put that elephant. I am of course talking about the 40 million immigrants (90% from the Third World) who have been brought into the country by the Democrats (for votes & to increase the demand for public services & grow the government) & Republicans (they want cheap labor). Every year another 1.5 million immigrants flood into the country & drive down wages & take jobs from the most vulnerable Americans. Why are we doing this to our fellow Americans?

Also, not a single word about “free trade”. From 2000 to 2010, America lost 6 million manufacturing jobs, 1 in every 3 we had, and saw 55,000 factories close. “Free trade” has been a disaster for America. “Free trade” is responsible for the destruction of our manufacturing base in this country, the outsourcing of 6 million manufacturing jobs, and the disappearing middle class.

The big business–globalist–Wall Street Journal–open borders–free trade crowd love “free trade” and mass immigration. The Republican base — working class and middle class whites (in Middle America) — have been destroyed by “free trade” and mass immigration. Yet the Republican elites don’t give a damn about their own voters. They are so greedy, they can’t stop screwing their own voters. And Republican voters are such pushovers they won’t even stand up to defend themselves from the assault being perpetrated on them by their own “leaders”. If the Republican base won’t stand up for themselves, then they deserve what is being done to them (by their own “leaders”).

Immigration & “free trade” (and exploding entitlement spending – but that’s another story) are the primary factors responsible for the destruction of the U.S. economy.

Immigrant workers, that is the question that is ignored by both sides. In the end, there are just not enough jobs. Time to start covering our own. The present level of unemployment roughly equals the level of legal and illegal immigrants.

Good points, up to a point:
- Free trade (which is really “managed trade,” and typically managed against us) and illegal immigration are legitimate and serious problems, and no one can reasonably deny that.
- But the two problems you cited were serious from 2000 to 2007, during which time the economy added 7.4 million jobs and the unemployment rate (without much of the going Galt effect we’re seeing now) came down to 4.5%.
- So if the two problems cited are the biggest ones, why did employment growth get to the point of virtual full employment, and why did the unemployment rate come down so low? (saying “the govt. lies” is a cop-out, and doesn’t count as an answer)

I’ll give you a partial answer, which is that resources (and to an extent, employment) were overallocated to homebuilding and home lending, and we’re paying the price. But IMO that’s only a small part of the answer. What’s the rest? I think it mostly lies in the difference between Obama’s policies and those of his four predecessors (Bush 43, Clinton after some kicking and screaming, Bush 41, and Reagan).

The U.S. economy was destroyed a long time ago — with all the “free trade” & outsourcing of (manufacturing) jobs, with mass immigration of 40 million immigrants (90% from the Third World) who were brought into the country by the the Demicans & Republicrats, by Big Business, the Catholic Church, & by The Enemy Within.

So why didn’t the U.S. economy collapse earlier? Answer: It was artificially propped up by Alan Greenspan, who created the housing bubble by lowering interest rates (in 2001) to historic lows (in order to prop up the economy).

In 2001, the US Federal Reserve lowered interest rates 11 times, from 6.5% to 1.75%. George W. Bush announced that he would increase minority home owners by at least 5.5 million by 2010. In June, Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates to 1%, the lowest in 45 years. Greenspan’s artificially low interest rates created the housing bubble, & the increased liquidity the higher home values bring to the overall economy.

Many of us warned you what was going to happen (because of Greenspan’s reckless policies) but you ignored us & called us crackpots, and kept on partying. In 2007-2008, the party came to an abrupt halt.

We also warned you about what would happen if you eliminated the GLASS-STEAGALL ACT. But you didn’t listen to us. You called us crackpots. Who was right?

Obama didn’t create the mess. Nixon & Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, George Bush, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke etc. created this mess. And now Obama has stepped on the gas pedal, and brought us closer to the cliff.

BTW, under Bush the National Debt increased from $5.7 Trillion to $10.6 Trillion, or $4.9 Trillion over 8 years. An average of $610 Billion per year. And under Obama it has skyrocketed to $15.7 Trillion (and rising) — completely out of control.

Conclusion. The U.S. economy will NEVER RECOVER, until we address the “free trade” globaloney & and our insane immigration policies. Electing Romney won’t really change anything. He has a “R” next to his name. So did Dubya. How did that work out?

What do you have against the Catholic Church? We are the ones standing at the gates to defend this nation against demographic collapse caused by the leftist atrocities known as abortion and contraception.

The greedy Catholic Church is behind it because the people of America walked away from the molesters’ dens and they need to bring in people from the Third World who are still gullible enough to sit there and listen to the molesters. The Roman Catholic Church is behind this. The Roman Catholic Church cannot get parishioners anymore amongst educated white people who have caught onto the racket and instead they need to import dummies to sit in the church pews. It’s all about greed. It’s greed at the top of the Catholic Church.

Make no mistake about why this is happening. This has nothing to do with compassion for Mexican workers. This has nothing to do with fairness for Mexican workers—it has to do with the greed. And that includes the Catholic Church pigs. I’m not going to be duped by this sanctimonious garbage that all churches are good and that the institution itself is good. The institution is rotten from the top to the bottom.

The Catholic Church, or any religion, has little direct influence on robust American employment conditions. {Their advocacy of honest dealings, hard work, frugality, fair wages, worker’s rights, and objection to government subsidies of abortion does have an influence on our macro economy.}

The US Catholic “molesters’ dens” existed 1/2 century ago, were exposed, and are shut down. The current molesters’ dens are ten fold larger, in our public schools, continue to destroy children, and there is zero interest (guts) in our educational leaders to weed out the monsters.

Catholic means “all”, and every nationality on the globe is welcome in any church.

None of this is related to the article. I just call out the vomit from an ignorant bigot.

It is so simple that even the lame stream media lap dog reporters should be able to understand.

If you have a pool of people and 115,000 people get new jobs, but in this pool of people 300,000 quit working, 150,000+ file for new unemployment, thousands try to claim disability, the number of people unemployed can not go down, except in Orwellian logic where everyone is equal but some or more equal than others.

Reminds me of President Reagan when speaking of liberals and should have included media lame stream lap dog reporters that the problem is that they know so much that just isn’t so.

Most recent STEM hires are temps… We call it bodyshopping in, e.g. programming services/contracting/consultng/out-sourcing, as contrasted with real, full-time, long-term employment designing, creating, and developing software products (which has been stagnant since 2001 May according to BLS figures).

That trend has been worsening since the 1970s. It took a bit of a jump in 1982, again in 1987, then went cross-border big-time after 1990. Since the 2001 recession the picture has been worse, but a little mixed, too, as some STEM firms cut back all employment while others stepped up off-shoring and use of foreign labor in the USA (directly and through bodyshoppers via contracts).